maepyong

Q: The first character is lost sometimes in spotlight window

The phenomenon is not always occurring. I launch spotlight with keyboard shortcut casually, then put some characters in its window immediately, however spotlight is searching wrong characters. I checked the characters then found the first character is missing. I surely press the key, but only first character is missing.

I think the phenomenon hasn't occurred on Yosemite, maybe from El Capitan. Has Spotlight functionality changed with any additional settings from El Capitan?

 

Screen Shot 2015-10-21 at 9.19.09 PM.png

Posted on Oct 21, 2015 12:30 PM

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Q: The first character is lost sometimes in spotlight window

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  • by jkbull,

    jkbull jkbull Jan 16, 2016 4:25 AM in response to philippkellr
    Level 1 (86 points)
    Jan 16, 2016 4:25 AM in response to philippkellr

    This is troubleshooting 101 – three of your programs fiddle with what is typed on the keyboard, which is exactly the problem you are having:

     

    • aText, which says it "accelerates your typing by replacing abbreviations";
    • karabiner, which is described as "A powerful and stable keyboard customizer for OS X"; and
    • seil, which is described as a "utility for the caps lock key and some international keys in PC keyboards".

     

    One of these, or the combination of two or three of them, is likely to be the cause of your problem. That's because all of them "hook into the innards" of OS X to watch as you type on the keyboard and sometimes change what you type, which, as I wrote above, is exactly the problem you are having.

     

    I advise you to first make sure that you have the latest versions of all of these programs and that those versions are supposed to work on El Capitan. After doing that, if the problem persists, try uninstalling them (one by one, in combinations) until the problem disappears. By "uninstall", I mean that you must uninstall each one using a utility or directions provided by the program's authors. Not fully uninstalling them may be worse than doing nothing.

  • by sdebacker,

    sdebacker sdebacker Jan 17, 2016 10:55 AM in response to jkbull
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 17, 2016 10:55 AM in response to jkbull

    I Have the bug, but none of these 3 apps.

  • by kluver,

    kluver kluver Jan 27, 2016 8:19 AM in response to maepyong
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 27, 2016 8:19 AM in response to maepyong

    Same problem here. Running OSX 10.11.3. First character is lost

  • by Wimmmmm,

    Wimmmmm Wimmmmm Jan 28, 2016 11:50 PM in response to maepyong
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Jan 28, 2016 11:50 PM in response to maepyong

    I believe I have found a solution!

     

    I had the same problem: starting Spotlight, and occasionally the first character went missing, thus rendering wrong search results and often opening a semi-random application.

    As some else already pointed out: look at keyboard modifying situations...

     

    Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts & select "Input Sources"

    In my case, these two options "Select the previous input source" and the next were activated, with a warning icon at the side, mentioning "This hot key conflicts with other hot keys".

     

    System Prefs keyboard.png.

    Deactivating these two options solved my "disappearing first character" problem!

  • by dendroaspis,

    dendroaspis dendroaspis Jan 29, 2016 12:12 AM in response to Wimmmmm
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jan 29, 2016 12:12 AM in response to Wimmmmm

    Thanks for sharing this. Unfortunately in my case there is no conflict in the keyboard shortcuts and the problem is still there. It seems to have become somehow less frequent recently, possibly after the latest OS update, but it's hard to quantify this precisely because I've also been using spotlight less as it had become frustrating.

  • by TaylorBo,

    TaylorBo TaylorBo Feb 5, 2016 9:27 AM in response to dendroaspis
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Notebooks
    Feb 5, 2016 9:27 AM in response to dendroaspis

    Hey guys,

     

    I had the same problem and it was driving me absolutely nuts. I use the Command + Space keyboard shortcut to launch and switch between apps on OS X.

    Here’s what fixed it for me…

     

    1. Open Spotlight in System Preferences

    2. UNCHECK Allow Spotlight Suggestions in Spotlight and Look up.

     

    The first letter has not dropped since changing this a few hours ago.

  • by sdebacker,

    sdebacker sdebacker Feb 5, 2016 9:35 AM in response to TaylorBo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 5, 2016 9:35 AM in response to TaylorBo

    It's unchecked but the problem is still present.

  • by TaylorBo,

    TaylorBo TaylorBo Feb 5, 2016 9:40 AM in response to sdebacker
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Notebooks
    Feb 5, 2016 9:40 AM in response to sdebacker

    Hmmm… I’m running 10.11.4 Beta (15E33e) and after I unchecked that setting it fixed things for me.

  • by TaylorBo,

    TaylorBo TaylorBo Feb 5, 2016 9:45 AM in response to TaylorBo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Notebooks
    Feb 5, 2016 9:45 AM in response to TaylorBo

    Maybe try relaunching Finder after you uncheck that setting? I also removed the duplicate keyboard shortcut mentioned previously (5 posts ago).

  • by johncook22,

    johncook22 johncook22 Feb 5, 2016 11:18 AM in response to TaylorBo
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 5, 2016 11:18 AM in response to TaylorBo

    Unfortunately did not work for me. I tried resetting my computer too.

  • by Tobie Malins,

    Tobie Malins Tobie Malins Feb 9, 2016 8:27 AM in response to johncook22
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Feb 9, 2016 8:27 AM in response to johncook22

    The issue has reappeared, occasionally, on my Mac as of last night. An erase and reinstall of the OS had meant it had been fine for over a month up until that point.

     

    The set of apps and services I use is pretty consistent, so I really can't think of anything new that I would have suddenly done to trigger its return.

  • by philippkellr,

    philippkellr philippkellr Feb 9, 2016 1:21 PM in response to jkbull
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 9, 2016 1:21 PM in response to jkbull

    thanks for the the investigation, indeed those 3 apps mess with the keyboard, I now uninstalled all of them and that's not it. I guess it's something else which triggers this, should be a price for the person who finds out.

     

    I also changed the spotlight shortcut to command-shift-space, this also didn't help. One thing I noticed though is that the issue happens most after the computer is woken up from sleep, when using it constantly for 10-20 minutes the issue appears less and less

  • by maepyong,

    maepyong maepyong Feb 29, 2016 11:47 PM in response to sdebacker
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Feb 29, 2016 11:47 PM in response to sdebacker

    Yes I have no these apps as well.

  • by maepyong,

    maepyong maepyong Feb 29, 2016 11:49 PM in response to dendroaspis
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Feb 29, 2016 11:49 PM in response to dendroaspis

    Yes in my case also has no conflict in key shortcut.

  • by philippkellr,

    philippkellr philippkellr Mar 1, 2016 12:14 AM in response to maepyong
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 1, 2016 12:14 AM in response to maepyong

    I have solved the issue now by installing Alfred. One of my colleagues had this issue years ago and he said that Alfred solved it for him. Since the installation (2 weeks ago) I didn't have this issue which proves that the problem lies in Spotlight itself and not in the keyboard settings.

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